Adults asked to accompany youths to discipleship

By Kim Roberts
Clarion Herald

Eight parishes in the Archdiocese of New Orleans are participating in a nationally funded youth “Accompaniment Project,” sponsored by the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry (NFCYM), which hopes to guide parishes on how best to “accompany” young people in  “encountering Christ and growing in discipleship.”

With grants from the national federation, the archdiocesan Catholic Youth and Young Adult Ministry Office is piloting the program with Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in Hahnville; St. Anthony of Padua, St. Maria Goretti, St. Paul the Apostle and St. Peter Claver in New Orleans; St. Clement of Rome in Metairie; Sts. Peter and Paul in Pearl River and Our Lady of Lourdes in Slidell.

“Each parish applied separately, and (archdiocesan CYO director) Adrian Jackson encouraged and championed the project in the New Orleans archdiocese and asked pastors to apply,” said Brigitte Burke, NFCYM senior project manager. “This is a national project with 41 parishes participating from five different (dioceses).”

Jackson said he was excited about the program because it allows his office to meet young people where they are and to rethink how they administer youth programs to get more youth involved as they move toward adulthood.

“We are excited and grateful for this opportunity to look at each of the parishes that made this commitment and to see where we are and how we can best serve each one of them,” Jackson said. “One of the things that attracted me to this project was that we could bring it beyond the eight parishes that were accepted as the original cohort and spread it archdiocese-wide, so everyone could benefit from this new model.”

New ministry model

Burke said research shows that the traditional models of youth ministry – gathering young people for meetings, which the church has been doing for years – are not effective in creating lifelong disciples. The old model works by getting youth to come together for a certain amount of time, but they drift away when they graduate and move into adulthood.

“The goal is to present a new model of ministry to young people that is ‘accompaniment’ focused,” Burke said. “We are testing the idea that perhaps we can minister to them in a way that is not a youth-age specific model. What would it look like if we focused our attention on equipping all the adults of the community to feel comfortable accompanying young people in faith wherever they encounter them, even if it’s not at a youth gathering? What would it look like if every adult in the pew was comfortable talking to and sharing their faith with the youth in their daily lives?”

“We want to move the whole parish toward (becoming) adults who accompany young people in faith,” she added. “Our project, and the resources that we provide to the parishes, are here to help them expand the network of adults who can be faith companions to the young people.”

N.O. cohort meeting

The New Orleans cohort met April 6 to embark on a three-year program. Each parish sent a steering committee that will implement the project within its parish. Approximately 30 adults and teenagers were in attendance. 

Accompaniment project coach, Tommy McGrady of Lafayette, spent the day explaining what accompaniment meant, what resources were available, what the planning process looked like and the process of implementation in the parish. 

“They will spend the next six months learning what the young people’s needs are in their community and start putting together a plan identifying the first place (in the parish) they want to train adults,” Burke said. “They will meet virtually with Tommy every three months to help with planning, and after six months, they will implement plans.”

McGrady said his job is to walk with the eight parishes as they test the new approach to youth ministry.

“I’m here for these parishes, to help them as issues or roadblocks arise, or when people don’t understand their role as an accompanier,” he said. “I’m here to help them navigate the logistics and to understand what it means to be a role model to the youth.”

“Each parish is different, so the approaches will be different,” he said. “The goal is to meet the needs of young people as they are, not as we think they should be. Going through the surveys and action plans is what we are working on first. I will provide encouragement and support. It will be a long process to change the game of youth ministry, but there is a lot of passion and potential in these parishes.”

 Teens voices heard

“It was an impressive experience,” said Sean Smith, a seventh-grade team member from St. Paul the Apostle Church in New Orleans East. “I like how everyone worked together during the meeting and how the teenagers were included in all of the conversations. I am excited about what is going on at St. Paul. We always put God first, and I look forward to being a bridge between the adults and children in this process, to help them both understand each other.”

Burke hopes her organization can do the project for three years, continuously learning and using professional evaluation tools to get solid feedback and, when completed, have something to share with other parishes.

“We want to be able to say, ‘Hey, we tried this. Here is where we had great success; here is what didn’t work,’ and offer what we learned as an option and as a way to move forward, as a way to lead more people to Christ as lifelong disciples,” she said.

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